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Ryan Seacrest Pitches His Mobile Keyboard Startup Typo
TV and radio star Ryan Seacrest was at the Consumer Electronics Show tonight to talk about Typo, the mobile keyboard startup that he co-founded with CEO Laurence Hallier.
Typo is showing off its upcoming keyboards for the iPad Air and iPad Mini, but my conversation with Seacrest focused more on the broader vision for the company and his experience with his first startup Read More
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Tales Of CES: We Were Promised Flying Cars, We Got Washing Machines Instead
My first CES started a little bit more than 24 hours ago for me. As I wrote yesterday, I want to share my impressions of the show. I’ve been following CES for years, but seeing it in person is a much different experience — starting with press day. Press day at CES means that all the big names from Samsung to LG, Panasonic, Sharp are holding a press conference to announce their… Read More
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Facebook Acquires Wit.ai To Help Its Developers With Speech Recognition And Voice Interfaces
Facebook today acquired Wit.ai, a Y Combinator startup founded 18 months ago to create an API for building voice-activated interfaces. Wit.ai already has 6,000 developers on its platform who have built hundreds of apps. Wit.ai’s platform will remain open and free, which makes it seem that Facebook wants to use the technology to draw developers into its Build-Grow-Monetize loop where they… Read More
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Tube Centrex Aims To Build Video Apps For YouTube Stars, Luxury Brands, And Others
Billing itself as “the world’s first cross device mobile and digital platform,” startup Tube Centrex is planning to help YouTube stars, media companies, and others build and monetize apps for their online videos Tube Centrex is led by Fahad Khan, previously founder of social marketing company One Public (where his younger brother Adil Khan is now president and CEO). Khan told… Read More
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Keith Rabois Leads $1.5 Million Round For “Even,” An Interest-Free, Mobile Alternative To Payday Loans
A startup whose first product is a mobile money management application called Even, designed to offer low-income workers interest-free credit to help them make ends meet in between paychecks, has raised $1.5 million in a seed round led by Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures, with participation from other investors. The service is meant to offer hourly, and generally part-time workers an… Read More
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Secret Wants To Be The Stream Of Consciousness For Live Events, Starting With CES
Which panel at this conference isn’t boring? Where’s the after-party? Your friends and followers around the world probably don’t know or care. But people nearby might, and Secret wants to connect you to them. Today Secret launches a CES feed that only people at the conference can share to. While posts will be anonymous, the point is to create a hyper-local backchannel… Read More
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Tales Of CES: Everybody Tells Me CES Is A Mess
Next week will be my first CES. Over the past couple of months, when I talked with CES veterans, they all told me that CES is a horrible experience. And yet, I am still incredibly excited. I plan to take advantage of my fresh perspective on the show to share my experience over the next few days. But first, let’s start with figuring out why everybody keeps telling me that CES is a mess.… Read More
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Apploi, A Job Hunting App, Raises Over $7 Million In Series A
Applying to jobs seems easy: you roll into a shop, fill out an application, and wait for a call. But aside from nicer handwriting, how do you stand out from the crowd of applicants? You use Apploi. Apploi’s CEO, Adam Lewis, launched the company to allow service industry workers put their best foot forward in job interviews. Designed as a sort of central system for applications as well as… Read More
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Scribd Raises $22M For Its Subscription E-Book Service
Scribd, a startup offering unlimited access to half a million e-books for $8.99 a month, is announcing that it has Raised $22 million in additional funding. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with Khosla partner Keith Rabois (previously an executive at PayPal, LinkedIn, Slide, and Square) joining the company’s board as an observer. In an email, Rabois compared Scribd’s… Read More
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Snapchat Has Raised $485 Million More From 23 Investors, At Valuation Of At Least $10B
Back in the day, we reported that messaging app Snapchat* was raising over $100 million in a round led by Kleiner Perkins. And then the WSJ reported that it was $20 million, which left us wondering why a growth round would be so small in terms of total principle. Well, it turns out it’s not. Snapchat has raised a much bigger amount: Nearly $500 million in aggregate, according to an… Read More
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